The motto Je me souviens (I remember) replaced the slogan La belle province on Québec licence plates in 1978. The change was made without public debate as if it went without saying, but several Québecers asked themselves what they should actually remember. A vox pop by the Montreal Star revealed that Montrealers had very different interpretations about the Conquest, the response to the Durham Report, and even about the 1976 (Parti Québécois) victory.

By failing to furnish official documentation about the motto, the government surely contributed to the confusion. Who can recall the origin of this motto and the context of its appearance, around 1885, on the ornamental façade of the Hôtel du Parlement (Parliament Buildings) in Québec City? Yet, it is there that the meaning is found.

Origins of the motto

Eugène-Étienne Taché, the architect of the parliament building created the Québec motto. He was the son of United Canada’s former prime minister Étienne-Paschal, who was both a regional Patriot leader (1837), and a Father of Confederation. Taché, a land surveyor by training and a deputy minister of Crown Land, was a widely cultured man with a passion for architecture. He had made an impression on his fellow citizens and government authorities by designing a series of triumphal arches for the bicentenary of the Québec Diocese, and as astonishing as it might seem for someone who was self-taught, he received the mandate to draw up the plans for a new parliament building.

Taché was inspired by the Louvre’s architecture, especially the building’s expansion (1852-1857) that would become the model par excellence of Second Empire style. The Louvre was also a model civil palace whose statuary developped secular themes. When Taché suggested dedicating the Hôtel du Parlement’s façade to the memory of great national historic figures, he found that the government authorities, wishing to strengthen Québec’s identity, were in agreement. They wanted to support the Québécois society’s longstanding existence and its status as a founding nation. Therefore, when the façade’s first stone was laid in 1884, Lieutenant-Governor Théodore Robitaille gave this response to those who questioned whether the Québécois people were attached to their institutions and their autonomy: “Go and visit the public buildings in the capital, and you will see that the people of Québec wish to preserve this self-government won after a century of struggle and conflict.”

To embellish the main entrance, Taché selected the coat of arms granted to the province by Queen Victoria in 1868, to which he added a motto of his own invention: Je me souviens. It is that simple. The government accepted his plans, appended them to the construction contract signed in1883, and carried them out.

Not a single passage was found in which Taché explained the origins and significance of Je me souviens. He probably did not feel it necessary since his message was so simple and the motto’s meaning so obvious when placed in context. In a report to the deputy-minister of Public Works in April 1883, Taché gave an overview of “all the memories” that he wanted to evoke in the decor of the Hôtel du Parlement’s façade. The passage leaves no doubt as to the meaning of Je me souviens. Taché wanted to build a Pantheon to commemorate heroes in Québec’s history, and his motto asks Québecers to remember them.

Meaning of the motto

Appearing discretely on the façade, the motto became an integral part of Québec’s coat of arms as of the late 19th century (although the government did not trouble to seek Royal assent), and it officially took on the heraldic description of coat of arms in 1939 by simple government decree.

That Quebecers had adopted Taché’s motto since the late 19th century is shown in a speech by historian, politician and member of the legislative council Thomas Chapais, in 1895:

The province of Québec has a motto which it is proud of, and likes to engrave on the pediments of its monuments and palaces. This motto has only three words: Je me souviens, but these three words in their simple laconicism equal the most eloquent of speeches. Yes, we remember. We remember the past and its lessons, the past and its misfortunes, the past and its glory.

No public discussion about this motto has surfaced, and Taché’s contemporaries did not question its significance. Until the 1970s, documents consulted on the subject remained consistent despite the government’s never offering an official interpretation, and like Chapais, several writers recalled only general historical memories. In English Canada things were similarly vague: "[the] ancient lineage, traditions and memories of all the past" [sic] (Association of Ontario Land Surveyors, 1934) or “the glory of the Ancien Régime” (Colombo’s Canadian Quotations, first edition, 1974).

The other motto

However, after Je me souviens was inserted on licence plates, an explanation spread that had already circulated in some circles by word-of-mouth. It was probably elaborated upon by an open letter from Taché’s granddaughter published in the Montréal Star in 1978. The writer of this letter claimed that Je me souviens was the beginning of a longer motto: “Je me souviens/Que né sous le lys/Je croîs sous la rose. I remember/That born under the lily/I grow under the rose.”

This explanation worked its way into at least one dictionary of quotations (Colombo’s Canadian Quotations), government information banks, and particularly the English language media. Journalists from the Globe and theGazette did not miss out on exploiting the ironic and political meaning on licence plates, reminding Québecers that “they had flourished under the rose of England!”

However, it is now clearly established that the "poem" from which this "complete motto" derived did not exist, and that it was in fact a matter of two distinct mottos by the same person. Taché conceived the second (which reads precisely Née dans les lis, je grandis dans les roses/Born in the lilies, I grow in the roses) for a monument that in the end was not built, and he later used it on the medal for Québec’s tercentenery in 1908.

The most interesting witness on this matter is David Ross McCord (1844-1930), who commented on the two mottos in his Historical Notebook c. 1900.

However mistaken may be the looking towards France as a disintegrating factor operating against the unification of the nation – it may be perhaps pardonable – no one can gainsay the beauty and simplicity of Eugene Taché’s words Je me souviens. He and Siméon Lesage have done more than any two other Canadians towards elevating the architectural taste in the Province. Is Taché not also the author of the other motto – the sentiment to which we will all drink a toast: "Née dans les lis, je croîs dans les roses." There is no disintegration there.

The evidence from the McCord Museum’s founder proves without a doubt that it really is a question of two distinct mottos. Furthermore, they do not have at all the same meaning. How then can we explain that they could be combined sometime between 1900 and 1978 and spread widely in an interpretation that did not correspond with Taché’s intentions? It remains a mystery.

The history of Québec’s motto was, all the same, remarkably simple. It originated from the individual initiative by the architect of the Hôtel du Parlement, and just asked Quebecers of all backgrounds to remember their history. Those who wanted to give it a vindictive meaning or use it in constitutional debates must be unaware that it had been engraved on the façade of the Hôtel du Parlement at the base of the statues of Wolf and Montcalm.